Monday, October 10, 2011

Please welcome Lyndi Alexander to our blog with a post about connecting with readers.

Lyndi will be sharing an excerpt of her book this week and giving an ebook to one lucky person who comments today or Friday.

Thanks to Ruby and the Greater Fort Worth Writers for the chance to make a guest appearance today! I made my own appearance into this world not very far from here, at Sheppard Air Force base, in Wichita Falls, Texas. So my heart’s tied to this great state, too!

First let me say, we love readers.

Of course authors love readers—we are readers! The reason we find joy in creating these characters and situations, and putting these characters through hell to come out the other side better and beloved, is because we grew up with that book (or these days, that ereader) in our hands.

Our job as authors doesn’t stop when we put that “The End” on the last page of the story. Especially today, authors spend a lot of their time making sure their stories end up in the hands of the readers.

The advent of Facebook and Twitter gives the writer some tools to reach out to a larger community beyond their own neighborhood. We can connect with others who share our enthusiasms, learn what they like, they learn what we like, and we come together over topics we love. They aren’t always what I expect, either. I posted a picture one time of my daughter in a pink cowboy hat—and ended up talking with my blog readers about it for weeks!

As writers, we desire connection, and so it’s our job to provide quality material that readers will want to hear about and read. That’s why many of us have websites and weblogs, so we have a place to talk about ourselves and our creations, to put our products out there in the world. It’s important for writers to have a website that’s friendly, attractive and easy to navigate. But above all, we hope you like our content. And just like everyone else, we’re learning new things all the time.

One of the new promotional devices that’s come along in the past years is the book trailer. I’ve been dying to have one, but professionally done, they can cost over a thousand dollars. As much as I love my book, I also have bills and a family to care for! So that price range was out for me. But with a little help from some fellow authors and a Savvy Authors class (Thanks Kris Tualla!!) I learned how to make one, and at a small fraction of what it would have cost to have someone else do it.

The Elf Queen (2010, Dragonfly Publishing Inc.), is the first book in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series. The story of this self-centered barista who discovers her whole life has been a lie continues in The Elf Child, released in 2011, and the soon to be released The Elf Mage.

~~~~The good news is, one of the readers who comments here at As We Were Saying will win a copy this week!

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Lyndi:Thanks so much for talking about the need for your marketing as a means to connect to readers. Once you've written a book, the real work just begins. That's why people are always saying get a blog, a website, join groups, speak to groups if asked, market yourself before you sell the book, it makes things much easier when you tweet: my book titled "Here I AM" is out today!Jan

I know--silly me, all this time I thought the hard part was getting the book finished!! :) But I'm finding so many nice people as I work through the ropes on the Internet and booksignings in person. You all make it easy to connect.